WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for the Alien franchise.
Of all of horror’s many sagas, few have produced such complex and dynamic female characters as the Alien franchise. From space-trekking astronauts and idealistic scientists to outlaw clones and alien queens, this cinematic galaxy is bursting with inspirational – and sometimes despicable – women fighting for their own survival.
Though Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) remains the series’ most enduring character, each chapter in the century-spanning saga either delivers a new female warrior or expands our understanding of the story’s original survivor.
Ridley Scott’s Alien sets the tone for a landmark series in cinematic female empowerment. The USCSS Nostromo is not only guided by an AI system known as Mother, two women occupy prominent roles in the disparate crew. When their mission is interrupted by a new directive from executives of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the disgruntled team lands on Planetoid LV-426 to track down a mysterious distress signal. Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), the ship’s navigator, takes part in an exploratory mission that leaves Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) mortally wounded with an alien entity attached to his face. When Lambert and Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) attempt to bring him back onto the ship, Ripley insists they observe protocol procedures and order them to stay outside and away from the rest of the crew. Unfortunately, the ship’s nefarious Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) disregards her orders and opens the door, allowing the alien creature onboard as well.
Released in 1979, Alien presents a harrowing study of bodily autonomy. Not only do we see a man forcibly impregnated with alien spawn, Kane dies in a gruesome approximation of cesarean birth. But the ship’s only female crew members also suffer uncomfortably sexualized attacks. When Lambert is confronted by the fully grown xenomorph, the creature runs its tail up her legs before killing her offscreen, suggesting a penetrative death. Later, when Ripley confronts Ash about his responsibility in letting the monster onboard, the synthetic attacks her by attempting to stuff a rolled-up porn magazine into her mouth. Though admittedly uncomfortable, Scott sets an even playing field and allows both men and women to experience sexualized violence. Though Lambert does not survive the alien encounter, Ripley does find empowerment and salvation by orchestrating a plan to blow up the contaminated ship and suck the alien creature out into space.
James Cameron’s sequel Aliens plays with female strength by pitting two fearsome mothers against each other to protect their young. After drifting in space for 57 years, Ripley is rescued and ultimately convinced to return to LV-426 to help find a group of terraformars who have lost contact with the corporation. As the new crew awakens from stasis, one of the marines sent to handle this “bug hunt” wakes herself up by doing pullups from the locker room infrastructure. Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) seems to resent Ripley’s presence onboard and makes a derisive reference to “sleeping beauty” while admiring her own impressive physique. Though she has a strong relationship with a fellow marine called Drake (Mark Rolston), she faces harassment from one of the team’s squeakier wheels. Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) asks if she’s ever been mistaken for a woman, likely commenting on her masculine style, short hair, and affection for large guns. But this confident woman quips back, “No. Have you?” refusing to be shamed for her strength and aggression. Throughout the film, Vasquez proves to be the strongest member of the marine team and sacrifices her own life to take out a swarm of approaching xenomorphs.
As Ripley predicted, the marine unit arrives to find the colony decimated and the terraform structures overrun with aliens. The only human survivor is a little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) whom Ripley seems to adopt as her own. Unfortunately, another villainous agent of the Weyland-Yutani corporation has joined the mission. Burke (Paul Reiser) plans to release two facehuggers to impregnate Ripley and Newt then sneak the valuable embryonic species past quarantine while the woman and child lie frozen in cryo-sleep. Whereas Ash was more concerned with scientific discovery, Burke plans to sacrifice mother and child while jeopardizing the continuation of humanity for the chance for a massive personal payday. With the help of several altruistic marines, Ripley is able to subvert this sinister plan and Burke winds up in the claws of the very monster he planned to capture.
While searching for Newt, Ripley stumbles upon a field of alien eggs waiting to hatch and impregnate more humans with their parasitic spawn. While surveying the pods, she notices a majestic xenomorph queen who’s egg sack is busily producing multitudes of these dangerous eggs. Ripley rescues Newt from a nearby cocoon then threatens to torch the eggs if the queen will not let her pass. The two mothers come to a stalemate and agree to let the others’ offspring survive, but Ripley changes her mind the moment she clears this alien minefield. With a giant flamethrower, she torches the eggs, sending the queen into an understandable, murderous rage. This betrayal sets up the franchise’s most iconic moment as Ripley dons a heavy steel loader making herself a physical match to the gigantic alien queen. Both mothers battle to the death in defense of their children with Ripley once again jettisoning the xenomorph into deep space.
Ripley is the only significant female character in David Fincher’s Alien³ and this directly puts her life in danger. After crash landing on Fiorina 161, a men’s penal colony filled with murderers and sex offenders, she learns that Newt and the other two passengers did not survive the collision. Stranded amongst the male prisoners and guards, she has only Clemens (Charles Dance), the colony’s doctor, for protection. Venturing out into the nearby structures, Ripley insists on searching Newt’s body for alien infestation and is cornered by a group of dangerous prisoners. She finds an uneasy ally in Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), a felon turned spiritual leader, who fights the men off though he’s more concerned with the safety and peace of his followers.
Unfortunately, there is a female being on Fiorina 161 threatening Ripley. Though Newt’s body is clean, examination reveals that Ripley herself has been impregnated while in stasis. She now carries the embryo of the queen, a monster who will lay thousands of eggs, each capable of destroying the entire prison population. With Weyland-Yutani operatives certain to harvest the species for use as a biological weapon, Ripley sacrifices her life to destroy the burgeoning queen. She throws herself into a massive furnace and dies to save the world from her greatest enemy.
Set 200 years after the events of the third film, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection brings back the popular heroine via the process of cloning. The story opens with doctors working with an infantile version of the adult character then surgically removing an alien embryo from her chest. This lab-grown Ripley possesses much of the former astronaut’s strength and grit, but DNA splicing has given her exceptional strength and the ability to rapidly heal. After three films following this remarkable heroine, it’s fun to watch Weaver dabble in villainy. Not only does she attempt to kill her captors, the clone also empathizes with the alien species and refers to herself as “monster’s mother.”
A later scene will show the horrors it took to bring this woman to life. While searching the ship, Ripley stumbles upon a room full of scientific nightmares. Noting the eight tattooed on her own arm, she finds seven failed versions who preceded her birth, each a different variation on a human/xenomorph nightmare. Even worse, the seventh clone is still alive. This pathetic humanoid creature has been confined to a hospital bed and begs to be put out of her misery. Ripley obliges, then weeps not only for the luck of her successful creation, but for the earlier clones and their intense suffering.
When mercenaries clash with the ship’s military crew, Ripley meets a female clone determined to wipe out the aliens once and for all. Call (Winona Ryder) sneaks into Ripley’s stark quarters and attempts to remove the embryo from Ripley’s chest, only to find it has already been harvested. The two women eventually form a close bond and work together to kill the queen before it can reach Earth and begin to reproduce. Despite bonding with the monster she birthed and a subsequent offspring known as the Newborn, Ripley maintains her devotion to humanity. With her acidic blood, she cuts a tiny hole in the ship’s outer wall, causing the screaming Newborn to be sucked out to space, one gruesome piece of viscera at a time.
Paul W.S. Anderson’s Alien vs. Predator remains the only film to center a woman of color as the story’s main protagonist. Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan) is a nature guide contracted by Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) to explore a newly discovered heat source located 2,000 miles below the frozen surface of Bouvetoya, a remote island off the coast of Antarctica. After penetrating this massive ice shield, the team finds a place of ritual sacrifice. Worshiped as gods by ancient human civilizations, Predators have been traveling to Earth once a century for a ceremonial hunt of the world’s most dangerous species: the xenomorph. In order to create wild alien game, they sacrifice several humans, but have orchestrated a failsafe plan to keep the deadly creatures from reaching the earth’s surface.
As the team becomes host to these terrifying parasites, Alexa and a Predator called Scar (Ian Whyte) create a pact to kill them all. Though Scar does not survive, Alexa manages to destroy the newly hatched aliens as well as the fearsome alien queen. She is rewarded for her bravery with a ceremonial spear from the Predators’ arsenal and a small facial scar symbolizing her own first kill and acceptance into this powerful race of intergalactic hunters.
In a series filled with inspiring female characters, Colin and Greg Strause’s Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem feels noticeably bereft. When Scar’s body spawns a hybrid predator/alien hatchling, the Predalien finds its way to Earth and begins to attack the citizens of Gunnison, Colorado. Though several women fall victim to this deadly invasion, only Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth) emerges with any kind of empowerment. The former soldier has just concluded a tour of duty and now finds herself somewhat estranged from her husband Tim (Sam Trammell) and young daughter Molly (Ariel Gade). The struggling family finds themselves caught in the crosshairs of a battle between the Predalien and his xenomorph siblings and Wolf (Whyte), a lone Predator sent to destroy these murderous beasts. When Tim dies trying to defend their home, Kelly escapes with Molly and joins other survivors to find refuge outside of the crumbling town.
Fortunately Police Chief Morales (John Ortiz) has made contact with military representatives and plans to gather survivors for an air evacuation in the center of town. But Kelly senses something is amiss and breaks off with a small group to find the town’s medevac helicopter. After battling their way through a hospital overrun with xenomorphs and facehuggers, Kelly, Molly, and a two recently reunited brothers manage to fly away moments before the military drops a tactical bomb on Gunnison, wiping out the surviving citizens along with both races of warring extraterrestrials. It’s not a particularly uplifting conclusion, but Kelly does manage to survive by listening to her instincts and acting in time to save her daughter.
Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated return to the Alien franchise, Prometheus, begins with the conception of humanity. A large man who will come to be known as an Engineer (Daniel James), ingests a mysterious black substance near a picturesque waterfall then begins to disintegrate as his DNA sparks cells that will eventually become the human race. Generations after this fascinating moment, archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover a star map etched into the walls of an ancient cave dwelling and interpret it to be an invitation to commune with these beings. Once they’ve arrived on LV-223, they realize their idealistic speculation couldn’t be further from the truth. This massive race of engineers likely lost control of a biological weapon which destroyed the colony. Once awakened by the ship’s synthetic David (Michael Fassbender), the sole remaining Engineer (Whyte) intends to release the weapon on earth to decimate its human population.
Due to his extensive programming and learning capabilities, David appears to be a protective force on the exploratory ship. However, the ship’s director, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) sees through his pleasant persona. Daughter of the ultra-wealthy Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), she knows that their true mission to the planet is to grant the elderly CEO eternal life. When David infects Halloway with the strange black fluid, Vickers prohibits him from reboarding the ship. Like Ripley before her, she insists that his unknown condition may put the rest of the crew in mortal danger.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to prevent contamination. Dr. Shaw has already been impregnated with a strange alien form. Horrified by its rapid growth and unknown origins, she hijacks an automated surgical table and performs a self-cesarean to remove the offending creature from her own abdomen. Despite her heroic efforts, these creatures wreak havoc on the surviving crew in addition to the remaining Engineer who plans to wipe out the human race. Dr. Shaw eventually uses her own aborted spawn, now a fully grown alien being, to defeat the Engineer. With David’s help, she launches a second spacecraft intent on discovering why they insist on targeting humans.
Scott’s Alien: Covenant may feature the greatest amount of prominent female characters in the franchise’s history, but they fill roles similar to Lambert and Ripley in the original film. We join the sleeping crew of the USCSS Covenant en route to colonize a remote planet known as Origae-6 as a solar flare threatens the ship’s stability and causes a deadly malfunction in the captain’s cryo-pod. While mourning this loss and adjusting their plans, they receive a vaguely human signal from a nearby planet. Against the advice of chief terraformist Daniels (Katherine Waterston), the newly appointed captain Oram (Billy Crudup) orders an exploratory mission to the newly discovered land in hopes of avoiding a longer trip to their original destination. But a mysterious spore lurks in the seemingly pleasant air and two crewmembers become infected with alien spawn.
Also hiding in the planet’s lush vegetation is David, the only survivor of the Prometheus mission lost ten years before. Though he initially appears to be a benevolent force, his plans may be more devious than those of Ash from the Nostromo’s doomed flight. Using the body of Dr. Shaw, he has been carefully cultivating the alien species and believes it to be far superior to the humans currently colonizing the galaxy. He plans to use Daniels’ body to harvest a queen, then implant her eggs into the sleeping bodies of the Covenant’s 2,000 colonists. Unlike the original film’s conclusion, Alien: Covenant ends on a dire note as Danni slips into cryo-sleep moments after learning that her body will soon become host to a biological weapon.
This legendary franchise has been at the forefront of sci-fi innovation and special effects design for more than four decades. However, in addition to the terrifying creatures that emerge from each film, the continuing story presents a strong female character who fights to protect not only the safety of those around her, but the sanctity of her own womb. Ridley Scott may have designed the original cast to be gender neutral, but with nuanced explorations of pregnancy, gestation, motherhood, and care, the Alien franchise has become an enduring story of female empowerment and women fighting for their right to bodily autonomy.
Don’t miss Cailee Spaeny as the franchise’s next heroine in Alien: Romulus.
(L-R): Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine and David Jonsson as Andy in 20th Century Studios’ ALIEN: ROMULUS. Photo by Murray Close. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.